A Collection of College Words and Customs Part 74

SENIOR CLa.s.sIC. At the University of Cambridge, Eng., the student who pa.s.ses best in the voluntary examination in cla.s.sics, which follows the last required examination in the Senate-House.

No one stands a chance for _Senior Cla.s.sic_ alongside of him.--_Bristed's Five Years in an Eng. Univ._, Ed. 2d, p. 55.

Two men who had been rivals all the way through school and through college were racing for _Senior Cla.s.sic_.--_Ibid._, p. 253.

SENIOR FELLOW. At Trinity College, Hartford, the Senior Fellow is a person chosen to attend the college examinations during the year.

SENIOR FRESHMAN. The name of the second of the four cla.s.ses into which undergraduates are divided at Trinity College, Dublin.

SENIORITY. In the University of Cambridge, Eng., the eight Senior Fellows and the Master of a college compose what is called the _Seniority_. Their decisions in all matters are generally conclusive.

My duty now obliges me, however reluctantly, to bring you before the _Seniority_.--_Alma Mater_, Vol. I. p. 75.

SENIOR OPTIME. Those who occupy the second rank in honors at the close of the final examination at the University of Cambridge, Eng., are denominated _Senior Optimes_.

The Second Cla.s.s, or that of _Senior Optimes_, is larger in number [than that of the Wranglers], usually exceeding forty, and sometimes reaching above sixty. This cla.s.s contains a number of disappointments, many who expect to be Wranglers, and some who are generally expected to be.--_Bristed's Five Years in an Eng.

Univ._, Ed. 2d, p. 228.

The word is frequently abbreviated.

The Pembroker ... had the pleasant prospect of getting up all his mathematics for a place among the _Senior Ops._--_Ibid._, p. 158.

He would get just questions enough to make him a low _Senior Op._ --_Ibid._, p. 222.

SENIOR ORATION. "The custom of delivering _Senior Orations_," says a correspondent, "is, I think, confined to Was.h.i.+ngton and Jefferson Colleges in Pennsylvania. Each member of the Senior Cla.s.s, taking them in alphabetical order, is required to deliver an oration before graduating, and on such nights as the Faculty may decide. The public are invited to attend, and the speaking is continued at appointed times, until each member of the Cla.s.s has spoken."

SENIOR SOPHISTER. At the University of Cambridge, Eng., a student in the third year of his residence is called a Senior Soph or Sophister.

2. In some American colleges, a member of the Senior Cla.s.s, i.e.

of the fourth year, was formerly designated a Senior Sophister.

See SOPHISTER.

SENIOR WRANGLER. In the University of Cambridge, Eng., the Senior Wrangler is the student who pa.s.ses the best examination in the Senate-House, and by consequence holds the first place on the Mathematical Tripos.

The only road to cla.s.sical honors and their accompanying emoluments in the University, and virtually in all the Colleges, except Trinity, is through mathematical honors, all candidates for the Cla.s.sical Tripos being obliged as a preliminary to obtain a place in that mathematical list which is headed by the _Senior Wrangler_ and tailed by the Wooden Spoon.--_Bristed's Five Years in an Eng. Univ._, Ed. 2d, p. 34.

SEQUESTER. To cause to retire or withdraw into obscurity. In the following pa.s.sage it is used in the collegiate sense of _suspend_ or _rusticate_.

Though they were adulti, they were corrected in the College, and _sequestered_, &c. for a time.--_Winthrop's Journal, by Savage_, Vol. II. p. 88.

SERVITOR. In the University of Oxford, an undergraduate who is partly supported by the college funds. _Servitors_ formerly waited at table, but this is now dispensed with. The order similar to that of the _servitor_ was at Cambridge styled the order of _Sub-sizars_. This has been long extinct. The _sizar_ at Cambridge is at present nearly equivalent to the Oxford _servitor_.--_Gent.

Mag._, 1787, p. 1146. _Brande_.

"It ought to be known," observes De Quincey, "that the cla.s.s of '_servitors_,' once a large body in Oxford, have gradually become practically extinct under the growing liberality of the age. They carried in their academic dress a mark of their inferiority; they waited at dinner on those of higher rank, and performed other menial services, humiliating to themselves, and latterly felt as no less humiliating to the general name and interests of learning."--_Life and Manners_, p. 272.

A reference to the cruel custom of "hunting the servitor" is to be found in Sir John Hawkins's Life of Dr. Johnson, p. 12.

SESSION. At some of the Southern and Western colleges of the United States, the time during which instruction is regularly given to the students; a term.

The _session_ commences on the 1st of October, and continues without interruption until the 29th of June.--_Cat. of Univ. of Virginia_, 1851, p. 15.

SEVENTY-EIGHTH PSALM. The recollections which cl.u.s.ter around this Psalm, so well known to all the Alumni of Harvard, are of the most pleasant nature. For more than a hundred years, it has been sung at the dinner given on Commencement day at Cambridge, and for more than a half-century to the tune of St. Martin's. Mr. Samuel Shapleigh, who graduated at Harvard College in the year 1789, and who was afterwards its Librarian, on the leaf of a hymn-book makes a memorandum in reference to this Psalm, to the effect that it has been sung at Cambridge on Commencement day "from _time immemorial_." The late Rev. Dr. John Pierce, a graduate of the cla.s.s of 1793, referring to the same subject, remarks: "The Seventy-eighth Psalm, it is supposed, has, _from the foundation of the College_, been sung in the common version of the day." In a poem, ent.i.tled Education, delivered at Cambridge before the Phi Beta Kappa Society, by Mr. William Biglow, July 18th, 1799, speaking of the conduct and manners of the students, the author says:--

"Like pigs they eat, they drink an ocean dry, They steal like France, like Jacobins they lie, They raise the very Devil, when called to prayers, 'To sons transmit the same, and they again to theirs'";

and, in explanation of the last line, adds this note: "Alluding to the Psalm which is _always_ sung in Harvard Hall on Commencement day." In his account of some of the exercises attendant upon the Commencement at Harvard College in 1848, Professor Sidney Willard observes: "At the Commencement dinner the sitting is not of long duration; and we retired from table soon after the singing of the Psalm, which, with some variation in the version, has been sung on the same occasion from time immemorial."--_Memoirs of Youth and Manhood_, Vol. II. p. 65.

But that we cannot take these accounts as correct in their full extent, appears from an entry in the MS. Diary of Chief Justice Sewall relating to a Commencement in 1685, which he closes with these words: "After Dinner ye 3d part of ye 103d Ps. was sung in ye Hall."

In the year 1793, at the dinner on Commencement Day, the Rev.

Joseph Willard, then President of the College, requested Mr.

afterwards Dr. John Pierce, to set the tune to the Psalm; with which request having complied to the satisfaction of all present, he from that period until the time of his death, in 1849, performed this service, being absent only on one occasion. Those who have attended Commencement dinners during the latter part of this period cannot but a.s.sociate with this hallowed Psalm the venerable appearance and the benevolent countenance of this excellent man.

In presenting a list of the different versions in which this Psalm has been sung, it must not be supposed that entire correctness has been reached; the very scanty accounts which remain render this almost impossible, but from these, which on a question of greater importance might be considered hardly sufficient, it would appear that the following are the versions in which the sons of Harvard have been accustomed to sing the Psalm of the son of Jesse.

1.--_The New England Version_.

"In 1639 there was an agreement amo. ye Magistrates and Ministers to set aside ye Psalms then printed at ye end of their Bibles, and sing one more congenial to their ideas of religion." Rev. Mr.

Richard Mather of Dorchester, and Rev. Mr. Thomas Weld and Rev.

Mr. John Eliot of Roxbury, were selected to make a metrical translation, to whom the Rev. Thomas Shepard of Cambridge gives the following metrical caution:--

"Ye Roxbury poets, keep clear of ye crime Of missing to give us very good rhyme, And you of Dorchester, your verses lengthen, But with the texts own words you will y'm strengthen."

The version of this ministerial trio was printed in the year 1640, at Cambridge, and has the honor of being the first production of the North American press that rises to the dignity of _a book_. It was ent.i.tled, "The Psalms newly turned into Metre." A second edition was printed in 1647. "It was more to be commended, however," says Mr. Peirce, in his History of Harvard University, "for its fidelity to the text, than for the elegance of its versification, which, having been executed by persons of different tastes and talents, was not only very uncouth, but deficient in uniformity. President Dunster, who was an excellent Oriental scholar, and possessed the other requisite qualifications for the task, was employed to revise and polish it; and in two or three years, with the a.s.sistance of Mr. Richard Lyon, a young gentleman who was sent from England by Sir Henry Mildmay to attend his son, then a student in Harvard College, he produced a work, which, under the appellation of the 'Bay Psalm-Book,' was, for a long time, the received version in the New England congregations, was also used in many societies in England and Scotland, and pa.s.sed through a great number of editions, both at home and abroad."--p.

14.

The Seventy-eighth Psalm is thus rendered in the first edition:--

Give listning eare unto my law, Yee people that are mine, Unto the sayings of my mouth Doe yee your eare incline.

My mouth I'le ope in parables, I'le speak hid things of old: Which we have heard, and knowne: and which Our fathers have us told.

Them from their children wee'l not hide, To th' after age shewing The Lords prayses; his strength, and works Of his wondrous doing.

In Jacob he a witnesse set, And put in Israell A law, which he our fathers charg'd They should their children tell: